Your Mind is an Opportunity: Building Mental Toughness with Dr. Lara Pence 2020-11-04

As a runner, you prioritize your physical training, but what are you doing for your mental health training? Dr. Lara Pence (aka Dr. L) is a clinical psychologist who has spent the last 15 years working with endurance athletes to help them shed unhealthy patterns of behavior and build mental strength using curiosity as a tool to become mentally resilient and adventurous. By training athletes to dive deeper into the why behind their goals, she also helps them boost their mental toughness by creating a values-driven way of being. Dr. L shares a lot of great info with Coach Claire on how to build mental strength, including discussions on the relationship between athletes and food, changing our personal narratives about our performance as we age, setbacks, and motivation. Having a fit mind is at least as important as having a fit body, and this is an episode everyone can benefit from. Dr. L is an East Coast native who did her post-doctoral fellowship in Dallas, TX. She has since built her own private practice, becoming one of the most sought-after therapists in Dallas. She moved to Colorado in 2019 to become the Chief Mind Doc for SPARTAN, the world's top endurance company. She also hosted the Spartan Mind podcast and served as a consultant to the organization on various mindset-focused initiatives. Dr. L is also a coach for The Unbeatable Mind, alongside Mark Divine, founder of SEAL FIT. She has been featured in various publications and media outlets such as Good Morning America, the BBC, Glamour, Vogue, WebMD, Psychology Today, and The Huffington Post. Most recently, Dr. L has launched her own podcast called Curious Minds with Dr. L, and she has a new product called LIGHFBOX, a simple program designed to exercise your mind, spark curiosity, and boost your mental fitness. Get ready to strengthen your mind and boost your mental fitness with Dr. L! Questions Lara is asked: 6:17 You like to call yourself an "active therapist" and that's not just because you are also a runner. What do you mean by that? 7:39 Let's talk about the people you do work with and your own running background. How do you specifically work with runners? 9:34 Eating disorders and running. Obviously, to be at the top of your game, you need to be light and lean. Thankfully some elite runners these days are talking more about how getting too lean is really causing huge problems, but there is a fine line between being at your highest performance and whether that's actually healthy or not. So how do you kind of dig through that mess? 12:15 Let's go into the performance side of what you do, mental strength training if you will. A lot of people, when runners or athletes get to a certain level, they realize that it's not just all about physical training. The mental aspect is absolutely huge, if not more important than the physical training. Everybody wants to know: How do we get mentally tough? 14:47 You're saying that we should just be curious about why a race or a workout didn't go well. How do you incorporate curiosity in success and failure when it comes to athletes? 17:12 I would love to hear about how you practice incorporating curiosity. Say I'm a runner and I'm trying to go after this big goal and I'm just getting frustrated. How do I practice curiosity to improve my mental strength? 20:33 What happens when you peel back the onion and maybe there's not such positive motivation down there? 23:45 Obviously 2020 has been a crazy year, but for runners specifically, all their races have been canceled pretty much. And so the carrot that everybody has, that's evaporated, and so a lot of the clients that I coach have just been like, "You know what? There's no race on the schedule. I don't really feel like training anymore." What advice do you give runners who are training without races? 29:23 I read on your blog that you wrote an article recently about overcoming setbacks. Obviously as people, but also as runners specifically, setbacks can happen all the time, whether it's just a bad workout or a big race that you train for that didn't go so well. I'd love to hear your ideas about overcoming setbacks. 33:28 How about successes? Some people, surprisingly, don't handle success very well. What are your thoughts on that? 35:54 I'd love to get your thoughts on comparison and competition. Runners compete in races and we compete against ourselves. That can be great, but that can also be pretty tough, especially if you were let's say a high school or college runner and you're now in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and you're just not the same person that you used to be. I would love to get your opinion and thoughts about Masters runners and about how as we get older, we're not as fast as we used to be, and how can we still celebrate what we can do? 40:16 I think honestly, the runners that have the healthier outlook as Masters are the ones who were not competitive when they were younger, because they're finding it all new and exciting, and every race is a PR, so it's really special, whereas sometimes I get other athletes who competed before and it seems like they're always looking backwards instead of looking forward. 42:31 What's next for you? You say that you have a race coming up in May. What are you training for? Questions I ask everyone: 43:42 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started running, what advice would you give? 43:51 What is the greatest gift running has given you? 44:15 Where can listeners connect with you? Quotes by Lara: "One of the things that I love to do, one of my strengths, is actually knowing my limitations and knowing what's the appropriate arena for me to explore something with a client and when it's not." "The judgement that can accumulate inside of us is almost like energy, if you think of it as energy. It's really toxic and can be really poisonous. And when we reduce the judgements and open up space for curiosity, it really allows for a willingness to learn and a willingness to absorb other information that can actually be helpful and fuel us." "In terms of setbacks, I really, really encourage individuals to have the mindset of everything is an opportunity." Take a Listen on Your Next Run Want more awesome interviews and advice? Subscribe to our iTunes channel Mentioned in this podcast: https://www.drlarapence.com/ Podcast - Curious Minds with Dr L Newsletter sign up LIGHFBOX self-reflection cards Salt Flats Endurance Run Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community RunnersConnect Facebook page claire@runnersconnect.net Follow Lara on: Instagram We really hope you've enjoyed this episode of Run to the Top. The best way you can show your support of the show is to share this podcast with your family and friends and share it on your Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel you use. The more people who know about the podcast and download the episodes, the more I can reach out to and get top running influencers, to bring them on and share their advice, which hopefully makes the show even more enjoyable for you!